Here’s How Much Joaquin Phoenix Trusted Lynne Ramsay

One of the most intriguing collaborations to debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week comes from Joaquin Phoenix and Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, two immensely talented artists who have gone on record about their refreshingly no-bullshit attitudes when it comes to Hollywood promotional games. So it makes sense that these seemingly kindred spirits, a pair of creative outsiders, united for a project like You Were Never Really Here, a dramatic thriller about another character bucking a system to do something meaningful. The film, which spurred a bidding war at last year’s festival, is based on the eponymous 2013 Jonathan Ames novella. But it wasn’t the source material or the central character, an emotionally unstable war veteran, that drew Phoenix to the project. It was Ramsay.

In fact, Phoenix told Vanity Fair by phone that he was so determined to work with the We Need to Talk About Kevin filmmaker that he arrived for the first day of filming last summer without having met Ramsay beforehand—something that the actor had never done before in his thrice-Oscar-nominated career.

“We’d spoken on the phone a little, but it’s difficult to understand her because of her accent,” Phoenix explained. “So I just said ‘yeah’ a lot, but then spent most of the time trying to figure out what she was saying.”

Phoenix had been pointed in Ramsay’s direction by Woody Allen’sIrrational Man cinematographer Darius Khondji, who told Phoenix that he considers Ramsay one of the greatest living filmmakers. Several weeks after the conversation—as if by divine fate—producer James Wilson e-mailed Phoenix about You Were Never Really Here to tell the actor about Ramsay’s new project.

The last feature Ramsay was slated to direct—Jane Got a Gun, a Western starring Natalie Portman—was steeped in controversy after the director failed to show up on the first day of filming in Santa Fe, New Mexico, following a reported battle with producers over creative control. (Khondji, who was slated to D.P. the film, followed Ramsay out of the production.) In my interview with Phoenix, though, the actor reveals that Ramsay not only showed up to film that first day, but fast-tracked pre-production when his schedule suddenly opened up last summer so that he could star. She also immediately did something to prove her deep investment in Phoenix and the story—something Phoenix had never seen in his career.

“We filmed this shot of me floating in this pool, and she just got in the pool with me, and just was there with me, right off-camera,” Phoenix explained. “There’s something about Lynne—she feels things very strongly. You’ll hear her breathing and making sounds off-camera because you know that she’s in it. But she got in the pool with me, and that was on the first day of filming! I was like, ‘Ah, I love this woman’ . . . It was the last shot of the night, and then when we were done, she was like, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and popped in the car soaking wet.”

“I have a great admiration for people like that, who just give everything they have and are completely devoted to what it is we’re working on,” Phoenix continued. “It’s not a job for Lynne. It’s not a profession. It’s something more. There’s something that she’s yearning to get at and to grapple with. It’s exciting and inspiring standing next to somebody that feels that strongly about things.”

Phoenix said he “fucking hates calling people artists”—the word is tossed around in filmmaking communities so often that it has lost its true meaning—but for Phoenix, that is the only descriptor that will do Ramsay justice.

“It seems just really stupid to me, but I can’t think of any better way to describe Lynne than calling her an artist.”

Phoenix called while Ramsay was deep underground, unable to speak with press because she was finishing a cut of the film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Phoenix was guarded about film details—presumably waiting for audiences to see the finished product themselves. When reminded that he wasplaying an emotionally unstable war vet again, after his gut-wrenching rendering of one in The Master, the actor said that he can’t describe what drew him again to this darkness. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I can’t think of anything that would be worthwhile to talk about.”

To prepare for the film, Phoenix spoke to ****Ty Ritter, a former bodyguard who goes on international military-style missions to rescue children suffering sexual exploitation and abuse by human traffickers. But Phoenix was reluctant to share what he learned from Ritter. At this point in the conversation, it became abundantly clear that Phoenix prefers to just do, rather than talk about doing, especially talking about something he’s done almost a year ago. And in the nicest way possible, he explained the rationale behind his attitude towards interviews.

“You make a movie,” Phoenix said. “And Lynne was so emotionally present to me and what the character was experiencing. Then you leave set and eat some French fries and curse at each other and she plays some music and sings along to it, and you have a fucking laugh.”

Cut to however many months later: “Then you wonder how you’re going to answer these questions that are necessary to [promote a movie]. But by then, you feel so far removed from the actual process that it seems just ridiculous and pretentious to talk about it.”

His logic makes sense. Why, then, would Phoenix call a reporter to discuss a project already so far in his rearview mirror?

Because Lynne Ramsay jumped in the pool for him. And she was such an unwaveringly attentive collaborator that Phoenix realizes it is now his chance to do the same in return.